“Supernatural” vets Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles are teaming up with “The Rookie” to hunt down demons — and the people trying to slay them — in the latest documentary-style episode of the ABC procedural.
This week’s episode sees Nolan and his crew investigating a suspicious suicide: Rich, a former LAPD police officer, has stabbed himself in the heart after spiraling into a deep obsession with demons and the group of demon hunters he believed was responsible for a string of unsolved murders.
Showrunner Alexi Hawley appears in the episode as a documentarian teaming up with Abigail Tierney (Madeleine Coghlan) to interview the LAPD about the bizarre case. As experts in demon-hunting, Padalecki and Ackles — who play themselves in the episode — are called in by the filmmakers to sit for an interview where they share their experiences with the supernatural and their impressions of Rich. (In the fictional storyline, the real-life actors crossed paths with the late officer years earlier at a fan event called “Monster Con.”)
“We co-starred on a TV show together for 15 seasons, called ‘Supernatural,'” Padalecki explains to the fillmmakers via Zoom. (As if we don’t already know!)
“Yeah, we played Sam and Dean Winchester, brothers that tracked and fought supernatural beings,” Ackles adds.
Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki talk Supernatural on The Rookie
Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles go on to share details about Rich. Per Ackles, Rich made such an impact at Monster Con because he wasn’t like other fans, he was “a different beast.”
Padalecki explains that Rich appeared to have a fixation on a particular episode where they fought a specific demon that Rich recognized.
“He seemed to think we knew more about [demon hunting] than we were saying,” Padalecki says. “He kept asking these super pointed questions like he was testing us.”
“We didn’t come up with these stories,” Ackles explains. “We just did what the writers wrote. It’s called acting.”
In the end, Rich had fallen victim to the kind of manipulation he once sought to expose. Though he wrongly believed himself to be possessed by a demon, he was right to connect all those unsolved murders.
The investigation ultimately finds that a direct-to-video movie director was the mastermind of the killings. (Strange, I know, but stick with me!) He had spun a web of demonic lies in order to manipulate those close to him into murdering people who’d wronged him. Luckily, the terrible, no good, very bad director had no affiliation with “Supernatural” — fictional or otherwise!
Were you delighted by the unexpected “Supernatural” reunion on “The Rookie”? Sound off in the comments below!
